THIS WEEKEND
George of the Jungle swung into theaters
nationwide with a meaty $16.6M weekend. Its Wednesday opening brought its
five-day total to $22.9M. Although a very strong showing, it was not enough
to unseat Men In Black
from the top spot as it collected $19M in ticket sales boosting its total
to $172.1M. Holding on extremely well in its second frame was Contact
starring Jodie Foster which dipped by a slim 22% taking its ten-day gross
to over $47M. The Robert Zemeckis-helmed picture is benefitting from controversy
brought on by President Clinton and CNN plus is being helped by recent
space-related news stories concerning the Mars Pathfinder and the Mir Space
Station. MIB
and Contact's
drops of 37% and 22%, respectively, from last weekend were very close to
my projections of 40% and 25%. Jungle
opened stronger than my guess of $17M over five days.

Also
opening over the weekend was the Martin Lawrence/Tim Robbins comedy Nothing
to Lose which bagged $11.6M. With few
comedies playing right now, the time was right to release this picture
and the opening total seems promising. It is the second biggest opening
for a Lawrence film (behind $15.5M for Bad
Boys in 1995) and the biggest for Robbins.
For a review of Nothing to Lose,
visit Chief's Movie Review
Page. Jackie Chan continues to suffer from diminishing returns as the
release of his 1991 film Operation Condor
was only able to collect $4.7M at theaters. His recent films have all opened
better : Rumble in the Bronx
debuted with a $9.9M weekend, Supercop
opened to $5.5M last July and First Strike
took in $5.8M in January of this year. Nothing
to Lose premiered better than my $9M guess
and Condor
just about matched my $5M forecast.

Elsewhere in the top
ten, there's no stopping My Best Friend's
Wedding which passed the $90M mark with
ease and dipped by less than 22% - the smallest drop in the top ten. It
continues to be the "date movie" of choice this summer and talks
of a sequel have already begun. Face Off
and Out to Sea
also fared well this weekend as the Travolta/Cage film's total reached
$86.3M and is still in the top five. Meanwhile Hercules
and Batman & Robin
eroded away but the Dynamic Duo finally limped across the $100M mark after
a full month.

Overall, the top ten
films grossed an encouraging $93.6M - up 28% from last year (when the Summer
Olympic games began) and up 24% from 1995. Below are the final figures
for the top ten films over the weekend. Click on the title to jump to its
official home page.